Refusal to meet President:

Tamil leaders lambast TNA

P. Krishnaswamy

V. Anandasangaree	D. Sidharthan

The negative response of the Tamil National Alliance to President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s invitation for discussion on the prevailing political situation came under fire from leaders of other political parties representing the people of the north and east.TULF leader V. Anandasangaree said “The TNA parliamentarians had missed the opportunity of personally expressing their stance and views with regard to ongoing war in the north, the problems of the people affected by it and what remedial measures they sought.”

“In this instance and other similar instances in the past they had acted as LTTE mouthpiece and not as representatives of the people. They have no right to speak of democracy as they were not democratically elected representatives in a free and fair election.

“However if they had the interests of the people at heart, they could have made use of the opportunity afforded by the President to bring the problems of the IDPs and the views of the government to the focus of the international community.” Chief Minister Eastern Province Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan when asked to comment said, “TNA parliamentarians had failed in their duty of explaining personally to President Mahinda Rajapaksa the problems of the people whom they claim to represent. Instead of meeting the President they had written a letter to him stating they were not accepting the President’s invitation and had missed the opportunity for a dialouge.”

PLOTE leader Dharmalingam Sidharthan: “The International Community including our neighbour India had continued to ask for talks to resolve the current crisis.

Instead of meeting the President on his invitation to discuss the issues bilaterally they had written to the President that they did not wish to meet him. If they had met the President and found they could not agree with the stance of the government they could have appealed to the international community.”

EPRLF (Pathmanabha Wing) General Secretary T. Sridaran: “The TNA should be proactive instead of being negative with regard to whatever problems they think the Tamil people encounter. Their action is similar to the negative attitude of the LTTE. It is their past leaders who had led the Tamil people to face the present crisis situation. They rejected to solution offered by the Indo-Lanka Accord and continued to reject all offers made at the peace talks including the last one in Oslo. Now they had rejected the offer made by President Rajapaksa to discuss the present problems of the Tamil people. We very much wish they do not miss such opportunities.”